Here’s the latest from I-News reporter Kristin Jones:

It’s hard to imagine: A flourishing local trade in hazardous electronic waste. Brokers buy it by the container-load, and sell it to the highest bidders. Their customers store it in their basements, douse it in acid or burn it in their driveways, truck it to local landfills, or ship it to Asia or Africa to be sold on the open market or dumped in toxic wastelands.

Now imagine that Colorado state agencies—including the one charged with regulating toxic waste—aren’t interfering in this trade. Instead, they profit from it by selling their own waste on the open market.

Sound far-fetched? In fact, this is just how electronic waste is handled in Colorado, an I-News investigation found last year.

Used electronics—which contain a toxic stew of arsenic, mercury, cadmium, lead and other nasty ingredients along with recoverable commodities like gold and copper—are bought, sold and processed with little oversight or accountability.

A bill moving through state senate this week aims to bring some order to the market.

An auction of surplus state government property, including a large allotment of computers and other electronic devices.

With input from the Colorado Association for Recycling, Senator Gail Schwartz introduced legislation April 29 that would require large recyclers and processors to be certified by the state public health department or national programs like e-Stewards and R2.

The intent is to prevent the kind of Wild-West brokering and overseas dumping uncovered by I-News.

“We’re trying to create through this bill a very high standard of accountability,” Schwartz told I-News. “We have to be comfortable that these goods are not ending up in the hands of someone who will bid for them and dispose of them improperly.”

Among its provisions are specific measures aimed at state agencies—whose auction of e-waste was highlighted in I-News’ investigation. The new law would require agencies to use vetted recyclers for their electronic trash. “To the extent that the state of Colorado and other government agencies are contributing to this issue, we need to tighten it up,” Schwartz said.

The proposed legislation falls short of mandating that producers take responsibility for discarded electronics—a key element of other state laws. That idea fell to stiff resistance from manufacturers here, said Marjorie Griek, executive director of the Colorado Association for Recycling.

If the bill passes, Colorado would join 25 other states that have laws on electronics recycling. But it’s fighting the clock. Even if it passes the Senate—as seems likely—it still has to make its way through the House before the current session ends on Wednesday (May 11).
SB11-269_Ewaste

Workers and volunteers carry and stack used computers during an Earth Day event. The computers and other electronics were collected by Denver-area recycler TechnoRescue. (LAURA FRANK/I-NEWS)

One of the things we wanted to learn here at I-News during our startup phase is how our media partners want to use our content. Our investigation of what happens in Colorado to e-waste – all those used computers, cell phones, TVs and other electronics – offered some interesting insights.

After a six-month investigation, we produced a four-part series. Each day covered a different aspect of what we found. Each day also had an accompanying video, plus photos and graphics.

Almost every I-News Network partner used the content in a different way.

Here are some examples:

The Boulder Daily Camera took our four-part series and published it the Sunday through Wednesday before Thanksgiving. And they did quite a bit of additional reporting to localize the story even more than we already had done for them. They produced several sidebars, including a look at the University of Colorado’s efforts to reduce e-waste, and a look at a local recycler.

The Denver Post wanted all four parts condensed into one hard-hitting story. They published it on their front page on Black Friday, as many consumers headed out to buy replacements for their old electronics.

The Fort Collins Coloradoan used the four-part series and started publishing on Black Friday. That meant the most localized Fort Collins reporting I-News had done for them wound up in their Sunday editions, their largest circulation day.

The Greeley Tribune is publishing the four-part series on four consecutive Sundays.

The Colorado Springs Gazette began publishing the four-part series on the Sunday after Black Friday.

Rocky Mountain PBS wanted three of the daily videos consolidated into one longer piece for its Colorado State of Mind public affairs show. They also posted each story of the four-day series on their RMPBS Reports section of the website and distributed references to it in their electronic newsletter.

All the other partners also published the stories on their websites, generating quite a bit of social media: During Thanksgiving week, there were more than 220 Tweets that referenced the stories. The story also was picked up by The Huffington Post, The Times of India, USA Today’s Colorado webpage and, according to Google, several thousand other websites.

So we learned a lot from our e-waste project: News outlets want customized content. The presentation preferences are vastly different for each partner. They all care deeply about timely, in-depth news for their audiences. And their audiences respond.